The 23-year-old was catapulted into the public eye after her triumphs in the 400 metres and 800m freestyle in Beijing, with the Mansfield-born swimmer feted on her return to Great Britain.

However, not everybody was so pleased – something she discovered the painful way. Now she does not read on-line interviews she has given and neither will she be using Twitter as much during the London Olympic Games.

On Sunday Adlington pasted a message that has been sent to her on Twitter, prefacing it with: "I had a perfect example of what has been said in the papers this week tweeted to me this morning. I apologise for the swearing when I RT it!"

She then posted: "How lovely is this person…" before retweeting a message to her which read: "@BeckAdlington you shark fin nosed d*******, you belong in that pool you f****** whale."

Adlington quickly received support from many of her Great Britain team‑mates. The former world 100m freestyle silver medallist Fran Halsall tweeted: "what a small insignificant life that person must lead", echoed by the former double Commonwealth champion Caitlin McClatchey, who wrote: "his parents must be so proud to have raised such a pathetic idiot! Well done for ur amazing 800 hun BOOM! Good luck today xx"

The Olympic open water bronze medallist Cassie Patten addressed the perpetrator directly, saying: "It must be hard for you, you obviously have achieved nothing in your life, as you feel the need to Insult @BeckAdlington."

It all follows the revelation by Adlington to a number of reporters that she has been subject to abuse on Twitter as well as negative comments online. She had said: "I love the block button on Twitter. I don't know how people expect to send a nasty comment and not get blocked.

"With Twitter I think it's one of those things if you like it like Liam [Tancock] who is on it every two minutes – 'just having my lunch, just doing this' – he loves it, he is like that in real life. Whereas I am on Twitter every now and again, I tweet here and there but not every day all the time.

"I think I will be going on every now and again but I won't be checking it.

"I want to stay focused – obviously the messages of support are absolutely amazing and I love reading all of those but you have got the chance of somebody saying something just to annoy you and you don't want that added stress. For myself, I think I'll tweet once it's over."

She added: "I used to [read articles] when it first happened but I am one of those people who then scroll down to the bottom and read the comments and I learned very quickly not to do that. Because it is awful and I get angry: even if there are 10 nice comments you always get one idiot.

"It makes you angry and frustrated. I've now given up because it upsets me or makes me angry."